[TheZookie007]

Lee Elder, who broke down racial barriers as the first Black golfer to play in the Masters and paved the way for Tiger Woods and others to follow, has died at the age of 87.

The PGA Tour announced Elder's death Monday. No cause or details were immediately available, but the tour said it confirmed Elder's death with his family.

He had been in poor health and wore an oxygen tube beneath his nose when he appeared at the opening of the Masters in April. The tour said he died early Sunday in Escondido, California.

"Lee was a good player, but most important, a good man who was very well respected by countless people,'' Jack Nicklaus wrote on his Twitter account. "The game of golf lost a hero in Lee Elder.''

A native Texan who developed his game during segregated times while caddying, Elder made history in 1975 at Augusta National, which had been an all-white tournament until he received an invitation after winning the Monsanto Open the previous year.

Elder missed the cut at his first Masters but stamped himself as a groundbreaking figure in a sport that had never been known for racial tolerance.

Twenty-two years later, Woods became the first Black golfer to capture the green jacket, launching one of the greatest careers in golf history.

This past April, in the wake of social justice protests that roiled the nation, the Masters honored Elder by having him join Nicklaus and Gary Player for the ceremonial opening tee shots. Elder was in poor health and unable to take a swing, but he held up his driver proudly at the first tee, clearly moved by the moment. "For me and my family, I think it was one of the most emotional experiences that I have ever witnessed or been involved in," he said...

Elder got into golf as a caddie, since that essentially was the only conduit Black people had to be permitted on the course. He was able to polish his game while serving in the Army and, after his discharge, joined the United Golf Association Tour for Black players in the early 1960s.

He developed into one of the UGA's best players, but meager prize money made it tough to earn a living. Finally, at 33, Elder was able to afford PGA qualifying school, where he earned his first tour card for the 1968 season. The highlight of his rookie year was a memorable loss to Nicklaus on the fifth hole of a sudden-death playoff at the American Golf Classic.

Elder would go on to capture four PGA Tour victories and eight more wins on the PGA Tour Champions for 50-and-over players. He played in all four major championships, tying for 11th at both the 1974 PGA Championship and the 1979 U.S. Open. His best finish at the Masters was a tie for 17th, also in 1979.

But Elder's impact on the game went far beyond wins and losses, even if it took decades for his legacy to be fully appreciated.

"Look out for the ones coming behind you. Lee Elder was an incredible contribution to golf and made history because of his talent, not just because he was African-American," said Harold Varner III, one of the handful of Black players on the PGA Tour. "I'm fortunate to have had the chance to learn from him."

Elder was 40 when he played in his first Masters, so many of his prime years already stolen from him by the scourge of racism.

The PGA had a Caucasian-only rule until 1961 -- 14 years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier. It took another 14 years for the Masters to invite a Black player.

Last year, before the pandemic-delayed Masters was played in November for the first time, Augusta National recognized Elder's enormous contributions by setting up two scholarships in his name at Paine College, a historically Black school in Augusta.

The club also invited him to take part in the ceremonial tee shot with Nicklaus and Player.

"It's a great honor, and I cherish it very much, and I will always cherish it," Elder said.

Nicklaus added, "It was long overdue."

Elder knew Robinson, who died in 1972, and was close with Hank Aaron, who endured racist threats throughout his stellar baseball career, particularly as he approached what was Babe Ruth's home run mark. Aaron hit his record-breaking 715th homer on April 8, 1974. Twelve days later, Elder won the Monsanto Open to qualify for the following year's Masters.

Elder visited with Aaron shortly before the Hammer died in January. "We talked about several things ... our sports, our particular sport and the involvement that we felt that we could help other young Blacks that was coming up behind us," Elder said. "And I certainly hope that the things that I have done have inspired a lot of young Black players and they will continue on with it."

Elder was at Augusta National for Woods' historic win in 1997.


Robert Lee Elder (1934-2021) in 1975

[TheZookie007]

Arlene Dahl, the actress who was best known for her role in the 1959 adventure film Journey to the Center of the Earth and had a fascinating second act as an author, beauty magnate, and astrologist, died Monday at 96.

Dahl's eldest son, the actor Lorenzo Lamas, announced her death on social media.

"Mom passed away this morning in New York," Lamas wrote. "She was the most positive influence on my life. I will remember her laughter, her joy, her dignity as she navigated the challenges that she faced. Never an ill word about anyone crossed her lips. Her ability to forgive left me speechless at times."

Arlene Dahl was born Aug. 11, 1925, in Minneapolis, Minn. She made her film debut, albeit uncredited, in the 1947 comedy Life With Father before starring as a leading lady in that year's My Wild Irish Rose.

As a contract player for MGM, Dahl appeared in such films as Three Little Words (1948) with Fred Astaire and Red Skelton, Scene of the Crime (1949) with Van Johnson, and Here Come the Girls (1953) with Bob Hope.

Dahl met her future husband Fernando Lamas on the set of 1953's Sangaree, and the two were married from 1954 to 1960. Lamas was Dahl's second of six husbands.

In 1952, Dahl began writing a syndicated beauty column, "Let's Be Beautiful", which ran for more than two decades. In 1954, she started her own cosmetics and lingerie lines under Arlene Dahl Enterprises.

The actress' most enduring role came with the big-screen adaptation of the Jules Verne novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, opposite James Mason and Pat Boone. But after son Lorenzo's birth in 1958, Dahl more or less retired from acting, though she continued to sporadically appear in films, on stage, and on television.

Dahl later made a name for herself as a businesswoman in the beauty industry in the '60s and '70s before cashing in on the astrology fad of the '80s with her own psychic hotline. She went on to write more than two dozen books on beauty and astrology, while still making the occasional appearance in front of the camera, including guest stints on her son Lorenzo's shows Renegade and Air America.

"She truly was a force of nature," Lamas wrote of his mother, "and as we got closer in my adult life I leaned on her more and more as my life counselor and the person I knew that lived and loved to the fullest."


Arlene Dahl (1925-2021), c. 1955

[TheZookie007]

David Gulpilil, the legendary indigenous Australian actor who earned international acclaim in Paul Hogan’s Crocodile Dundee and Rolf de Heer’s Charlie’s Country, has died after a four-year battle with lung cancer. He was 68.

The award-winning thespian’s passing was announced Monday via a statement by South Australian Premier Steven Marshall: “It is with deep sadness that I share with the people of South Australia the passing of an iconic, once-in-a-generation artist who shaped the history of Australian film and Aboriginal representation on screen – David Gulpilil Ridjimiraril Dalaithngu (AM).”

Born on July 1, 1953, Gulpilil was raised in the bush and never went to school. He often said he learned English by listening. “That’s all I know, dancing, singing, spear-throwing and hunting,” he recalled in a 2015 interview, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “My father gave me a spear and said make sure you come back, the spear is life.”

He was discovered at 16 when Brit auteur filmmaker Nicholas Roeg spotted him performing a traditional ceremonial dance — and cast him in 1971’s Walkabout. The cult hit told the tale of two city-bred siblings stranded in the outback, where they learn to survive with the aid of an Aboriginal boy on his ritual “walkabout” separation from his tribe.

He went on to make an indelible impression during Australia’s cinematic “New Wave” era with naturalistic performances in a trio of films from 1976 and 1977: Mad Dog Morgan opposite Dennis Hopper, the chi!dren’s classic Storm Boy and Peter Weir’s acclaimed The Last Wave, with Richard Chamberlain.

Gulpilil is perhaps best-known to mass audiences for 1986’s Crocodile Dundee, Australia’s top-grossing film and a major blockbuster in the US. He stole scenes as the dryly witty Neville Bell, an indigenous Australian who encounters Paul Hogan’s Mick Dundee in the bush.

His legendary line: When Bell tells journalist Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski) she can’t take his photograph, she responds, “I’m sorry — you believe it will take your spirit away?”

“No,” Gulpilil’s Bell replies, “You’ve got the lens cap on.”

Within a year of being crowned an international film star, he was awarded the A.M. (Member of the Order of Australia) in the 1987 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for “services to the arts through the interpretation of Aboriginal culture.”

He earned a best-supporting actor nomination in 2002 from the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards for his performance as a tracker pursuing three children who escape government-enforced servitude in Philip Noyce’s Rabbit-Proof Fence.

He later appeared opposite Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman in Baz Luhrmann’s epic 2008 flop Australia, before hitting hard times and temporarily dropping off the cinematic radar.

After years of struggle and a stint behind bars for aggravated assault, filmmaker Rolf de Heer visited Gulpilil in jail. Shocked by the conditions his former colleague was living in — the director offered professional motivation for the actor upon his release.

It would result in what many consider the role of his career: Gulpilil won the Un Certain Regard best actor prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival for his haunting performance in 2013’s Charlie Country, which he co-wrote with de Heer and starred in as an aging man wanting to retreat to his Aboriginal cultural roots.

In July 2019, Gulpilil received the National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee lifetime achievement award. He revealed in a prerecorded message that he had been battling lung cancer since 2017. “To everyone, thank you for watching me … never forget me while I am here,” he said at the time. “I will never forget you. I will still remember you even though it won’t go on forever. I will still remember.”

He is survived by his wife Miriam Ashley and son Jamie Gulpilil. A new documentary about his life, My Name is Gulpilil, premiered in September.

[TheZookie007]

Breaking News: "Sen. Bob Dole dead at the age of 98"

[rtpoe]

AL UNSER (1939-2021)

The youngest of four racing brothers, Unser was born in in Albuquerque in 1939 to a family of hardcore racers. His father Jerry Unser and two uncles, Louis and Joe, were also drivers. Beginning in 1926 the family began competing in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, an annual road race held in Colorado.

Unser began racing himself in 1957 when he was 18, but competed mostly in sprint cars. He made it to Indy in 1965 driving in a car owned by Foyt and was part of the rookie class with future Indy 500 winners Mario Andretti (1969) and Gordon Johncock (1973, 1982).

He dominated in his first Indy win in 1970 by starting from the pole and leading all but 10 of the 200 laps, beating runner-up Mark Donohue by 32 seconds. He won again the next year in the distinctive "Johnny Lightning Special" fielded by Parnelli Jones and finished second to Donohue in 1972. He earned his third Indy win in 1978.

In 1987, he was in Indianapolis to be with his son Al Jr. as the latter prepped for the 500. Al Sr. had been replaced as the Team Penske driver in favor of Danny Ongais. But Ongais crashed in a practice run, so Roger Penske asked Al Sr. if he'd be willing to take the spot. “I said heck yes, I didn’t have to take a second guess about that one because it is a team that is capable of winning,” he replied. Unfortunately, the car was also out of commission - with two weeks to go, they had to use their "backup" car - that began the month as a show car on display in a hotel in Reading, Pennsylvania, where the team was based.

Perhaps a bit out of practice - and 47 years old to boot - Al qualified in the #20 spot, too far back to be a serious challenger for the win.

Here's how the 1987 Indianapolis 500 ended:



He finished his career with a total of 27 starts in the Indy 500, third most in history, and qualified once on the pole and five times on the front row. The Unser family combined for 73 career starts in the Indy 500 -- a number bettered only by the 76 starts by the Andretti family. The Unser participation spans Al (27 races), Bobby (19) and Al Jr. (19), as well as Johnny (5), Robby (2) and Jerry (1).

Al Unser Sr. retired in 1994 and remains the career lap leader for the Indianapolis 500 with 644, leading over half the laps in three of his Indy 500 victories. The closest active driver is Scott Dixon with 570 laps led.

After battling cancer for 17 years, he died at his home in Chama, New Mexico, with his wife, Susan, by his side.

"One of the top 5 racers who has ever lived - and the kindest, calmest, smartest, toughest, most fun, well-liked guy ever." - Mario Andretti

"I will always remember Big Al welcoming me to the speedway. He and Johnny Rutherford were the two helping me with my rookie orientation. He will be missed." - 2021 Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves

The four-time Indy 500 winners - AJ Foyt, Al Unser, Rick Mears, and Helio Castroneves - with the Borg-Warner Trophy earlier this year:

[TheZookie007]

I thought he had passed years ago.

RIP Mr. Unser.

[solvegas]

For those of you old enough to remember the 1966 NBC show when it debuted, guitarist of " The Monkees ", Michael Nesmith died at age 78 of natural causes. 

[TheZookie007]

For those of you old enough to remember the 1966 NBC show when it debuted, guitarist of " The Monkees ", Michael Nesmith died at age 78 of natural causes. 

"Michael Nesmith, Monkees singer-songwriter and guitarist, dies at 78"

The Monkees singer-songwriter and guitarist Michael Nesmith died on Friday morning from natural causes. He was 78 years old.

"With Infinite Love we announce that Michael Nesmith has passed away this morning in his home, surrounded by family, peacefully and of natural causes," his family said in a statement obtained by EW. "We ask that you respect our privacy at this time and we thank you for the love and light that all of you have shown him and us."

Born in Houston, Texas, Nesmith auditioned to join the Monkees — a band put together by TV producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider with the idea of doing a TV series about the adventures of a pop group — in 1965. Nesmith snagged a spot in the group alongside Mikey Dolenz, Davy Jones, and Peter Tork as actors on the TV series, as well as providing vocals on the songs. Nesmith contributed some songs he'd written with producers to the mix of bops the band would perform.

Over the years, Nesmith amassed more songwriting credits than all the other members combined and wrote many of the band's most famous songs including, "Mary, Mary," "Circle Sky," "Listen to the Band," and "The Girl I Knew Somewhere."

The Monkees television series aired on NBC in 1966, the same year the band scored No. 1 hits with "I'm a Believer" and "Last Train to Clarksville." By the time their third album, 1967's Headquarters, rolled around, the band had grown tired of criticism that they didn't write and perform their own music, so they insisted on co-writing the songs and playing their own instruments on the project.

In 1968, Nesmith recorded his first solo album, Wichita Train Whistle Songs. Nesmith departed the Monkees in 1969 and started his own group, the First National Band. The group released two albums in 1970: Magnetic South and Loose Salute. Nesmith played reunion concerts with the Monkees and the First National Band over the years, even as recently as 2021 when he teamed up with the Monkees for a series of reunion tours. In 2016, the band released the album Good Times! to positive reviews and went on a farewell tour in 2021, with their final show taking place in November at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles.

Dolenz, the last surviving member of the Monkees as Jones died in 2012 and Tork died in 2019, was among those paying their respects, writing, "I'm heartbroken. I've lost a dear friend and partner. I'm so grateful that we could spend the last couple of months together doing what we loved best — singing, laughing, and doing shtick. I'll miss it all so much.  Especially the shtick. Rest in peace, Nez."

...Nesmith was also a huge and early proponent of the music video, creating the first televised music video program PopClips, which aired on Nickelodeon. In 1980, after inheriting a substantial sum from his mother — Bette Nesmith Graham, inventor of Liquid Paper — he invested the money in multiple business ventures, including home video company Pacific Arts, producing movies like Repo Man and Tapeheads.

The singer/songwriter was hospitalized in 2018, diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and underwent quadruple bypass heart surgery. He was forced to postpone a tour with his Monkees bandmate Micky Dolenz as a result.

[TheZookie007]

"Anne Rice, Who Spun Gothic Tales of Vampires, Dies at 80"

She wrote more than 30 novels, including the best seller Interview With the Vampire, which became a hit movie starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

Anne Rice, the Gothic novelist best known for Interview With the Vampire, the 1976 book that in 1994 became a popular film starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, died on Saturday at a hospital in Rancho Mirage, Calif. She was 80.

Her son, Christopher Rice, wrote on social media that the cause was complications of a stroke.

Ms. Rice was a largely unknown writer when she turned a short story she had written in the late 1960s into Interview With the Vampire, her first published novel. It features a solitary vampire named Louis who is telling his life story to a reporter, but Ms. Rice said the tale was her story as well.

“I really got into the character,” she told The New York Times in 1988. “For the first time, I was able to describe my reality, the dark, gothic influence on my childhood. It’s not fantasy for me. My childhood came to life for me.”

Many critics gave the book short shrift, seeming not to grasp either its tone or its appeal.

“The publicity tells us Rice is ‘a dazzling storyteller,’” Leo Braudy wrote in The Times. “But there is no story here, only a series of sometimes effective but always essentially static tableaus out of Roger Corman films, and some self‐conscious soliloquizing out of Spiderman comics, all wrapped in a ballooning, pompous language.”

The reading public, though, latched on; Interview With the Vampire became a best seller, and Ms. Rice found herself with a considerable fan base, which she proceeded to entertain with a series of follow-up novels that became known collectively as the Vampire Chronicles. The books, more than a dozen in all, are widely credited with fueling a revival of interest in all things vampiric, which has been reflected on the big and small screens as well as onstage ever since.

But Ms. Rice, who wrote dozens of books in all, was not a one-subject novelist. She wrote free-standing novels like Cry to Heaven (1982), about the careers of two castrati. Under the name Anne Rampling, she wrote steamy novels including Exit to Eden (1985), which featured sex slaves. And as A.N. Roquelaure, she wrote an erotic series known as the “Slee ping Beauty” novels.

Ms. Rice’s fans are nothing if not passionate, willing to immerse themselves in the worlds she created.

“When I go to my signings,” she told the ABC News program “Day One” in 1993, “I’m the most boring person there. Everybody else is dripping with velvet and lace, and bringing me dead roses wrapped in leather handcuffs, and I love it.”

Howard Allen O’Brien was born on Oct. 4, 1941, in New Orleans to Howard and Katherine (Allen) O’Brien. (Oddly, she had been named after her father; by the time she was in first grade she had adopted “Anne.”) Her father worked for the Postal Service, and her mother was a homemaker.

She grew up in New Orleans, writing plays that she and her three sisters would perform and imagining ghostly figures in the windows of the New Orleans mansions she would stroll past. Movies like Dracula’s Daughter (1936) made a vivid impression.

So did her Roman Catholic upbringing and education, full of imagery that played to her already vivid imagination.

“To sit and listen to the miracles that happened to this saint or that saint, or how somebody floated up in the air during prayer, I mean, that was just the normal fare in Catholic school,” she said.

When she was 15 her mother died; she said she believed the cause was alcoholism, something Ms. Rice would struggle with later, though in a 2008 video she said she had been sober for 28 years.

By her late teens, she had become disillusioned with the Catholic faith.

“I have a great deal of anger against a church that would teach kids a 7-year-old could burn in hell for French kissing, right alongside a Nazi sadist,” she told The Times in 1988. In the late 1990s, though, she would return to a belief in God after decades of atheism; over the next several years she wrote two novels inspired by the life of Jesus, as well as a memoir, Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Journey (2008).

Her father remarried and moved the family to Texas, where in high school Ms. Rice first met Stan Rice, a fellow student.

She attended Texas Woman’s University for a time but dropped out and tried living in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. She had made an impression on Mr. Rice in high school, and he sought her out; they began an intense correspondence, and eventually he proposed by mail.

They married in 1961 and settled in San Francisco, where Mr. Rice, who died in 2002, became a poet and teacher. Ms. Rice earned a degree at San Francisco State University, though in political science, not literature — “I was a poor reader,” she wrote in her memoir, “and, in fact, couldn’t major in English because I could not read the amounts of Chaucer or Shakespeare assigned in the classes.” (Later, though, she would earn a master’s degree in creative writing there.)

A pivotal event for the couple occurred in 1972, when their daughter, Michele, died of leukemia at the age of 5. Ms Rice said the loss left her bereft and directionless for a time, until she tried returning to writing to shake off the melancholy.

“I wanted to write and write and write, and pour out my emotions, and make stories, and create something,” she told ABC in the 1993 interview. “That was my response to seeing something die and something pass out of my hands like that, and seeing this beautiful chi!d die, no matter what I did or anybody else did.” Interview With the Vampire — which includes a young girl who resembles Michelle — was the result.

She followed up that book with The Vampire Lestat (1985), The Queen of the Damned (1988) and others in the Vampire Chronicles series. The latest, Blood Communion, was published in 2018.

In addition to her son, a writer with whom she sometimes collaborated on books, she is survived by her sisters Karen O’Brien, Micki Jenkins and Tamara Tinker.

In the 1993 interview with ABC, Ms. Rice, who lived in Rancho Mirage, said part of her fascination with vampires as a literary device was that they could be seen as a metaphor for the human condition. “Because,” as she put it, “all of us make ruthless compromises in order to live, don’t you think?”

She perhaps had a vampiric side herself.

“I want to be loved and never forgotten,” she said. “I’m really greedy, you know? I want to be immortal.”

[TheZookie007]

"Mexican National Treasure and King of Rancheras, Vicente Fernández, is Dead at 81"

He sold more than 65 million albums and filmed more than 35 movies in a decades-long career that brought him international fame

Vicente Fernández, the Mexican entertainer whose illustrious career as the "king of rancheras" spanned decades in music and film, has died. He was 81.

"Rest in peace, Mr. Vicente Fernández. We regret to inform you of his death on Sunday, December 12 at 6:15 a.m.," a post on the singer's Instagram page said. "It was an honor and a great pride to share with everyone a great musical career and to give everything for his audience. Thank you for continuing to applaud, thank you for continuing to sing."

Fernández died in Guadalajara in his home state of Jalisco. He had been hospitalized for four months after a fall at his ranch. Fernández suffered from Guillain-Barré syndrome, which made it difficult for him to recover.

Known as "Chente" to his adoring fans, he's been compared to the likes of Frank Sinatra. Those fans mourned his death as they woke up to the news Sunday morning. His songs of love, heartbreak and masculinity are a staple in Hispanic households. They include the hits "El rey," "Volver, volver" and "Por tu maldito amor."

Fernández was so widely revered that the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, released a statement on Twitter: "My condolences to family, friends and the millions of admirers of Vicente Fernández, a symbol of the ranchera music of our time, known and recognized in Mexico and abroad."

Fernández has sold more than 65 million albums and filmed more than 35 movies. He won three Grammys and eight Latin Grammys, in addition to being named Person of the Year by the Latin Recording Academy in 2002. In 1998, Fernández received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The "king of country" George Strait paid tribute to the late 81-year-old, whose illustrious career as the "king of rancheras" spanned decades in music and film.

"Sad news today. We lost The amazing legendary Vicente Fernández this morning," Strait wrote on Twitter. "One of my heroes. May he Rest In Peace and may God bless and comfort his family. Hasta la Cruz Chente!!"

Strait had covered "El Rey," singing entirely in Spanish on his 2009 album Twang, a first in his career.

[TheZookie007]

This morning Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu died in Klerksdorp, South Africa. He was 90 years old.

[rtpoe]

Also this morning, we found that evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson died.

Most of his research was involved in studying ants; he identified hundreds of species, and discovered that they communicate through pheromones. But he became most famous for developing "sociobiology", the idea that biological imperatives drive a lot of human behavior. It got a lot of flak at the time, but has worked its way into the mainstream.

Some thoughts of his from a very recent interview:

"There are many undiscovered and unstudied species in the world — especially in remote areas in the tropics — that await even the most elementary studies, and the results are going to continue to unfold across several generations of scientists."

"The most important discoveries are going to be made in examining the smallest of the ants, the animals, the plants. We just need to know what is on this planet. We need to have a more complete and productive understanding of how to care for the life that we’ve inherited."

"If you wish, you can take a map of the world and throw a dart. Where the dart hits, you will find animals and plants and mysteries of great magnitude."

"It’s only by completely open and honest research done to the best of our ability that we can understand where we fit as a species that has evolved in the midst of a living world that has peculiar properties that have deeply influenced what we’ve become."

"I’ve found that, in different parts of our country and in foreign countries, when people become familiar with what’s in their natural environment, what’s interesting, what’s important on a broader scale, what gives them pleasures, that depth of understanding leads to a long-term improvement in their quality of life."

https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2021/12/2/22810857/eo-wilson-ants-half-earth-conservation

[TheZookie007]

Another recent loss:

CBS News: "Sarah Weddington, lawyer who successfully argued Roe v. Wade to Supreme Court, has died at 76"

[TheZookie007]

Also this morning, we found that evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson died.

Most of his research was involved in studying ants; he identified hundreds of species, and discovered that they communicate through pheromones. But he became most famous for developing "sociobiology", the idea that biological imperatives drive a lot of human behavior. It got a lot of flak at the time, but has worked its way into the mainstream.

Some thoughts of his from a very recent interview:

"There are many undiscovered and unstudied species in the world — especially in remote areas in the tropics — that await even the most elementary studies, and the results are going to continue to unfold across several generations of scientists."

"The most important discoveries are going to be made in examining the smallest of the ants, the animals, the plants. We just need to know what is on this planet. We need to have a more complete and productive understanding of how to care for the life that we’ve inherited."

"If you wish, you can take a map of the world and throw a dart. Where the dart hits, you will find animals and plants and mysteries of great magnitude."

"It’s only by completely open and honest research done to the best of our ability that we can understand where we fit as a species that has evolved in the midst of a living world that has peculiar properties that have deeply influenced what we’ve become."

"I’ve found that, in different parts of our country and in foreign countries, when people become familiar with what’s in their natural environment, what’s interesting, what’s important on a broader scale, what gives them pleasures, that depth of understanding leads to a long-term improvement in their quality of life."

https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2021/12/2/22810857/eo-wilson-ants-half-earth-conservation

The BBC quoted people who called him "the most important biologist since Darwin". That's high praise.

[cosine]

John Madden died today, 28 December '21.